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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Call of Pripyat Complete is the third entry in the Complete mod series, which is a set of modifications created by professional artists dedicated to enhancing the production quality of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series. The Complete mods emphasize on improving the original graphics, sound, and atmosphere of each game while preserving the core game elements.

Built upon the success of Stalker Complete 2009, which was downloaded by one in every five S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl players, this entry in the Complete mod series is the cumulative culmination of the series’ achievements in aesthetically updating the game without introducing unnecessary or gameplay-redefining features.

Designed to meet the desires of new players and veterans alike, Call of Pripyat Complete unleashes the full potential of the latest, most climactic chapter in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R and the Complete mod series.

The weather system in this mod is constructed out of two primary components: the classic Complete Weather that has put this series on pages of magazines, and the popular and widely acclaimed AtmosFear massive weather overhaul by Cromm Cruac, effectively making it the biggest graphical collaboration in the game series’ history. Featuring incredible diversity in weather conditions and landscapes varying between game areas, the graphical enhancements include:

Distant scenery texturing and an increased actor visual distance that put the player in the middle of a large open world, rather than the previously “enclosed” map

11 dynamic weather cycles (compared to only four in the base game) including a unique probability factor for each different game environment area

Authentic scenery recreation using our original photographs of the Russian industrial town of Mednogorsk, which represents how Pripyat once was

The Jupiter and Pripyat game areas feature the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Limansk radar and the Red Forest Brainscorcher visible on the horizon line

High resolution nighttime constellation map and full moon

Dynamic Depth of Field that changes according to weather conditions

AtmosFear Emission sequence with dramatic scenery and a complex shockwave particle system

The included Absolute Nature and Absolute Structures texture packs solve the game’s most noticeable visual shortcoming: overall blurry textures and noticeable grass pop-in. With over a thousand new and reworked original textures (with gradual sharpening of separate MIP map levels in every texture), the game environment remains sharp as it fades in the distance. These texture packages have been customized and further edited to
match the rest of the Complete series’ art style. The most noticeable enhancements include:

Sharpened metal and concrete structures, effectively changing the way the much of the game appears

Color corrected ground and foliage textures designed to be unique for each game area

Reworked foliage and terrain, making the grass draw line less noticeable

Vehicles are now retextured to appear realistically rusted and abandoned

The artificial intelligence has been greatly improved, giving NPCs new abilities such as:

Weapon Selection - NPCs are now able to determine the best weapon for the situation based on the number of rounds they have left for their weapon and distance to target, switching appropriately.

Using Add-Ons - NPCs are able mount add-ons, such as scopes, silencers, and grenade launchers, and use them accordingly.

Armoring Allies – NPCs can now be equipped with player-selected weapons by either dropping them by or selling to them to NPCs. To ensure NPCs continue using their new weapons be sure to also sell or drop by them ammunition for the weapon, which then acts as an infinite ammunition supply.

Friendly Fire - NPCs avoid friendly fire, and they will even stop firing and switch positions if their allies get caught in it.

Melee - NPCs use melee attacks with rifle butts and knifes when the opposition gets close enough.

Self-Healing - NPCs are able to heal themselves by using Medkits if hurt badly and apply bandages when bleeding.

Since S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat is the most stable title released in the series, it naturally doesn't require extensive bug fixing. However, there are some remaining bugs and glitches that have been eliminated:

Unreachable Stashes Fix - Makes the unreachable stashes (such as items that are wedged or stuck in environmental geometry) accessible.

Jupiter Scanners Fix - Fixes the bug where the player could place the initial three anomaly scanners into the two additional anomaly fields that scanners aren’t supposed to be put in until later, which caused errors in the mission’s completion.

X8 Burers Fix - Fixes a bug in scripting that gives the three Burers in the X8 secret room extremely large health regeneration (which made them virtually invincible).

One Shot Fix - Fixes a potential game lockup during the One Shot mission cutscene.

Helmet Fix - The actor’s helmet in third person view now matches the one equipped.

Bodies Cleaner - Removes creature bodies at certain time intervals, reducing their unnecessary presence in the environment and improving the game engine’s performance.

Since the game was made by a foreign studio, quite a few language related errors in dialogue, translation, and text in the English localization exist. As with the first game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, misspelled words, typos, grammatical errors, and humor lost in translation can be charming at times given the context, but create unnecessary difficulty in understanding their meaning. Numerous typos and grammatical mistakes have been corrected, and most of the conversation text has been changed to make more sense and read better to English speaking players. Some parts of the user interface have also been changed to be more internally consistent, and as a bonus the subtitle timing during the intro and outro sequences has been altered to sync with the audio.

We are proud to introduce the work by a special guest, internationally acclaimed sound designer and composer Michael "sQwurm" Tornabene, known for his work for games, films, TV, and media exhibitions around the world. His contributions include new sounds for creatures, anomalies, doors, a reworked footstep sound system, and more. Improvements to ambient sounds are done in Imperialreign’s Ambient Audio Overhaul, and each map now includes a sound theme that varies between night and day. Also, all weapon sounds have been replaced with comprehensive analogues. All of the new sounds have been integrated into the game without removing the original sounds unique to the game, ensuring a superior audio experience aligned with the Complete mod’s vision.

Call of Pripyat Complete introduces over a hundred acoustic guitar and vocal songs, with 23 new compositions added. New guitar tracks have been added to the existing campfire music sets. This live music was recorded specifically for this game, creating an unforgettable ambience.

Putting the fate of NPCs unfortunately caught in an emission wave in the player’s hands, you can decide if they will turn into zombies to satisfy all your zombie killing pleasure! This feature is brought to you by AtmosFear, and is selected during the installation. Players can choose whether NPCs will be killed upon contact of the advancing emission wave, at its end (as in the base game), explode, or turned into zombies.

Real Weapon Names - All in game weapons now are labeled after their real life counterparts.

NPC Variation - Adds new NPC models and skins in the gameworld, increasing the variety.

The Wish Granter - Activated via the ESC+F1 keyboard shortcut, a hidden interface designed to let you spawn items, place anomalies, characters, mutants and much more on the map is at the player’s fingertips. You can essentially build the game around your preferences through this interface (this feature can be toggled on and off, see User Manual for details).

Sleeping Bag - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat features a newer native sleeping mechanic. The fans of the traditional Complete series’ sleeping bag won't find it in the actor's inventory, but will be able to purchase it from traders, and in rare cases, find it on NPCs.

Loot Money - Players will be able to randomly collect small amounts of money from dead NPCs. The collection will be indicated with a coin sound effect and the amount will be shown by an on-screen alert.

Absolute Scopes - Improves the scope system to be similar to those used in most modern FPS games.

Breakable Bulbs - Lights can now break by being shot or by nearby explosions, changing the ambient environment.

Teleport - Allows the player to jump between points in the environment with the ability to save custom location coordinates for future use.

With the new user interface update, skipping through introductory movies isn’t necessary. The HUD colors have been muted to not be distracting, and the inventory window is now semi-transparent, which allows the player to view the weapon currently being equipped. The HUD also features new hitmark and mutant scratch textures authored by our studio. Also, the ESC+S shortcut from the other Complete mods is added, which
works like a “smart quick-save”, creating a separate save file with level name, in-game date, and timestamp each time it’s used.

Normal - A well balanced combination of graphical features designed to stay within the original game's system requirements. This version is recommended for most systems to ensure a trouble-free gaming experience, especially if using 32-bit Windows, a laptop, or only moderate hardware.

Advanced - Offering a greater variety in weather conditions and NPC appearances, this version is designed to take full advantage of high performance 64-bit systems with 4GB or more of system memory and at least 1GB of GPU memory. Select this version if you have an enthusiast-level system and are comfortable with significantly increasing the system resource demand.

You may change which mod version you have at any time through uninstalling & then reinstalling the mod. However, while the Normal version saves are compatible with the Advanced version, the Advanced version saves are not compatible with the Normal version.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Clear Sky Complete is a part of the Complete mod collection, which is a series of modifications created by professional artists dedicated to enhancing the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. The Complete mods focus on improving the original game’s graphics, sound, and atmosphere, while preserving its core elements. Built upon the success of STALKER Complete 2009 (which was downloaded well over 100,000 times), this entry in the Complete collection continues the tradition of aesthetically updating the game without changing the original story or gameplay. Fans can expect a polished and pure Zone experience designed around the most graphically demanding title of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky.

Clear Sky Complete Overview:

Version 1.1.3 by Artistpavel

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is a graphically improved prequel that integrates newer visual technology that we introduced in our previous mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. This gave us a solid foundation for further enhancements, letting us focus solely on the design elements of the games’ art style and aesthetics.

The most notable feature is the introduction of the brand new set of distant scenery textures that put the player in the middle of a large open world, rather than the previously “enclosed” map. The original photographs used in this project were captured by our studio during our travels to the Russian industrial town of Mednogorsk, which represents how Pripyat once was. Once we returned to the studio we applied our graphic design expertise to edit our real-life environment captures to closely match the fictional in-game Zone environment.

Other graphical enhancements include stunning new lighting effects, natural daytime/nighttime transitions, vivid sunsets/sunrises, redesigned emissions, a new high resolution nighttime constellation map, a full moon, and many other aesthetic improvements too numerous to list.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky features improved textures compared to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, however there was still a lot of room for refinement. Instead doing a total retexture, we only needed to replace select sets with respect to game designer's vision. This new texture set contains the best work by the community along with the introduction of new rendering techniques authored by our studio, such as:

Reworked foliage and terrain, making the grass draw line less noticeable

Detailed textures for most of the weapons

Replaced bricks, concrete, metal and ground textures

Refined human and mutant textures

New details such as smoldering firewood, leaves, and stones

Vehicles now appear realistically rusted and abandoned

The purpose of this sound overhaul was to further enhance the ambience and atmosphere of the Zone with the addition of higher quality and more realistic ambient audio files. Each map now includes a sound theme that varies between night and day. All this has been integrated without diminishing the original sounds unique to Clear Sky, ensuring a superior audio experience. All weapon sounds have been replaced with comprehensive analogues, and footsteps, bullet impacts, anomalies, creatures, and many other sound categories have been improved.

This mod introduces nearly a hundred acoustic guitar and vocal songs. They have been added to campfire music sets, and are unique to each faction. This live music was recorded specifically for this game, creating an unforgettable ambience. Also, some new and familiar music tracks can be heard on the radio and megaphones throughout the Zone. However, this mod doesn't modify the dynamic combat music, which can still be turned on and off in the game options.

Bug fixes are the specialty of the Sky Reclamation Project, a community patch which brings the joint effort of a large number of community members together to address bugs still present in Clear Sky after its final patch, and eliminates many game breaking issues. This mod is included in Clear Sky Complete, and features:

Crash Fixes - many potential “crash to desktop” errors have been eliminated.

Gameplay Fixes - fixed a large number of gameplay bugs that could keep the game from progressing, like preventing the accidental death of important characters and other triggered events.

Weapon Fixes - fixed animations, incorrect ironsight positions and corrected the depth of field effect on most weapons.

Various tweaks have been implemented in Clear Sky Complete to create a more fluid experience for a player and to maintain continuity with other games in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. Noticeable tweaks include:

Reducing the grenades available to NPCs to prevent “grenade spamming”

Bandages and medkits heal and stop bleeding, and less bleeding in general

All pistols now have ironsights

Weapons now have real-life names

Enabled trading weapons with NPCs, and NPCs now sell ammo and supplies

Reduced military minigunner's vision distance

Added the ability to carry explosives

Corrected Bandit behavior so they won't mug the player if their player-status is friendly

Increased flashlight output

The Wish Granter - activated via the ESC F1 keyboard shortcut, it is a hidden interface designed to let you enable vehicles, control weather, and place anomalies, characters, mutants and much more on the map. You can essentially build the game around your preferences through this interface.

Sleeping Bag - allows the player sleep in-game, and now features an advanced safety level indicator.

Gnomus' Scopes - a scope system similar to one used in most modern FPS games.

Elite Nightvision - improved black & white night vision.

Teleport - allows the player to jump between points in the environment with the ability to save custom coordinates for future use.

With the new user interface update you no longer have to skip through introductory movies. Also, the HUD colors have been muted so they don't distract and the inventory window is now semi-transparent, which allows the player to view the weapon currently being equipped. Also, the ESC+S shortcut from Stalker Complete 2009 is added, which works like a “smart quick-save” creating a separate save file with level name, in-game date, and time each time it’s used.

If you haven’t played 2007’s most immersive and atmospheric shooter, or you’re back for replay, this mod is for you. This is the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like you’ve never seen before, with updated graphics and added functionality that don’t change the original story or gameplay. The game hasn’t been changed beyond recognition, but rather enhanced while preserving the core elements that made it the unique experience it is.

What makes this mod different?

It was designed by professional graphic artists with rich experience in the field, following industry standards for creating interactive 3D environments. It features artistic works and modifications from many community members unified under one art direction. The game has been redesigned with new visual qualities, and is offered as one convenient, complete package to reach a user base beyond the modding community. This mod has been created with a thought of bringing the beautiful and immersive game of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl from the previous generation when it was created to an up-to-date experience you’d expect from games currently being developed.

STALKER Complete 2009

Version 1.4.4 by artistpavel

The following list details the carefully chosen collection of technically advanced and aesthetically brilliant modifications that were created by talented modders, concept artists, and programmers over the past two years. They are meant to technically and artistically enhance the original feel and atmosphere the developers meant you to experience, without compromising it in the process. You’ll notice every single detail has been retouched and has a polished feel to it.

This is ideal for first time players or people who finished the game in the past and now are coming back to replay it on newer, more powerful hardware on improved resolution and graphics.

Developed by a professional art studio, the weather system in Stalker Complete 2009 is a pinnacle of visual game design. It features work by several artists including challenge winners from conceptart.org (the largest concept art community which produces works for games and movie industries). It’s based on the same elements and principles found in representational art such as aerial perspective, composition, balance, and color theory, to name a few. The key features include:

Natural multi-phase day and night transitions, based on daily observations, photographs, and studies by artists from Dolgov Studios

This mod takes full advantage of Shader Model 3.0 and introduces advanced shader technology first seen in the game “Crysis”. This tool allows creating close-to-life illusions of true relief and depth, in addition to adding rendering techniques creating an enormous difference in the way the game looks. Improvements include:

Parallax Occlusion Mapping - Gives 2D textures the illusion of 3D geometry, most visible on surfaces such as brick walls.

This mod includes a texture overhaul featuring the “Photorealistic Zone”, a total rework of every texture in game by Argus over a nine month period. Special attention has been given to preserve the game’s original look while the original textures have been replaced with higher quality versions and manually bump-edited files. The textures are heavily optimized to reduce performance impact. Elements that are improved include:

Locations - All location textures have been replaced with higher quality photographs with partial use of original files and assets other games in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.

Living Creatures - Mutated creatures have soaking wet flesh showing through wounds, creating a disturbingly graphic effect. Also, all humans in Zone have been retouched down to even the finest details (armor, shoes, wrinkles, faces, even their eyeballs).

Vehicles - 20 year old vehicles in the Zone now appear realistically rusted and abandoned.

The game’s notorious reputation of being a huge bugfest ends here. Over the past two years a joint community effort has accumulated fixes for most known bugs and crash to desktop exits left out by developers after patch 1.0005. With the release of the unofficial community patch, bug fixes and numerous positive gameplay tweaks are implemented, such as realistic weapons names, reduced head bobbing, increased actor’s height, increased inventory weight limit, extended quest times, and more.

Artificial Intelligence received major reworking:

New abilities - NPCs can avoid anomalies, remove dead bodies from camp sites, throw grenades, change armor, and even heal other NPCs. You can also give weapons and armor to NPCs by selling or dropping it near them and giving them privacy to equip them (NPC’s preferences may prevent them from accepting the items, however).

Early detection - removed the ability for NPC's to notice you at unrealistically large distances.

Stealth - Removed the ability for NPC’s to notice the player at unrealistically large distances.

Death panic - Reduced the sound distance of death cries (in the original game it caused the entire camp to alert once one member was hit, as it was set to be heard at a great distance).

This mod replaces a massive amount of in-game sounds, including weapons, anomalies, equipment clatter, footsteps, nightlife, bullet fly-by sounds and more with higher quality versions. Also, the mod adds unique ambient sounds for each weather cycle. “Repetitive” NPCs will now only say their lines once (such as the “Get out of here, stalker” line), and hundreds of additional ambient sounds like bar kitchen cooking, nighttime horror sounds, fog sounds, and more have been added to the game, creating a more immersive audio experience.

The mod also adds a new music collection, featuring 84 new acoustic guitar compositions added to the existing set plus a few vocal songs in authentic language unique to each faction. This is the only music mod where compositions have been performed live and recorded specifically for this game by a musician (no MIDI or generic karaoke tracks were used). This is live music with human touch that blends seamlessly with the ambient soundtrack, and makes you want to spend more time by the campfire. Also, NPCs will now randomly play the harmonica in addition to the guitar. Finally, 19 authentic music tracks can be heard on the radio and from the megaphones throughout the Zone.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl is not exactly a textbook example when it comes to localization. Misspelled words, typos, grammatical errors, and humor lost in translation can be charming at times given the context, but creating unnecessary difficulty in understanding their meaning. Most of the text received a grammar-friendly rewrite, providing a much improved English localization.

A visual overhaul mod isn’t complete without a new, custom user interface. This is why we are proud to present our very own Main Menu, Loading Screen, and redesigned HUD. Created by our graphic design firm, the interface incorporates existing in-game art and photographs of actual Chernobyl disaster zone artifacts, adding a unique art style and authentic feel. Certain buttons have been conveniently reorganized for more intuitive access and new shortcuts added, such as ESC S which works like a “smart quick-save”, creating a separate save file with the level name, in-game date, and timestamp each time it’s used.

Sleeping Bag - It’s always in the inventory and allows the player sleep in-game.

Faction Change and Reset - Now players have the ability to reset hostile status and join factions outside of the storyline.

Elite Nightvision - Black & white night vision based on the psy_antenna postprocess effect. This one really makes you see in the dark.

ZRP Teleport - The ESC J shortcut lets you jump between the points in the environment.

Third-Person View - Press F1, F2 and F3 to cycle through camera views and + or - to zoom in & out (by default this feature enables camera toggle only, add -psp switch to a shortcut to activate a third-person gameplay, please refer to Technical FAQ page 15 for assistance).

Other features - Authentic food and drink skins, the ability to drag dead creatures’ bodies, the ability to carry selected explosive fuel cans & barrels, the ability to shoot birds, and more!

After your journey ends with the “good” ending, you’ll get the dialogue that will let you continue the game in freeplay mode, allowing creatures and NPCs to migrate freely about in the environment. It will be a living and breathing zone with self sustained A-Life and unscripted events. This feature doesn’t remove the ending scene, so players will still have the enjoyment of viewing the cinematic completion of the game. You can skip the entire story line from the start by pressing ESC T while in-game and teleporting to the last map or by clicking Freeplay and “Equip for Level” to start from the first map.

There is also a large number of small subtle changes that make big difference in overall experience. ReadMe contains extended list of mods and their respective authors who contributed to this project.

This mod will run smooth as long as you have a video card with Shader Model 3.0 and large amount of memory to accommodate textures, it performs better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky/Call of Pripyat, while providing similar and often better visuals, it's DirectX9 and the X-Ray engine at full potential.

Designed and tested for STALKER version 1.0005/1.0006. Starting a new game is required!

Lighting – the new day-night cycle’s particularly spectacular – and textures are what’s most lovingly touched by the hand of mod, but on the non-graphical front much of the in-game text gets a more grammar-friendly rewrite and the HUD receives a much-needed overhaul.

As mods go this is one of the most subtle imaginable. It does not attempt to change the atmosphere or effect of the game world, but simple to enhance it. 900 new textures, an improved sky and weather system, and the introduction of expanded graphics options make this one of the most exquisitely beautiful experiences ever to grace a gaming system. [...] this is, finally, the finished and complete version of Stalker - as good as it could possibly have been on release.

This is the "STALKER Complete 2009" mod [...], which does an admirable job of making the game look like it was, well, made in 2009. New textures, new lighting and new weather effects help get the game looking ship-shape...

New main menu art based on real photographs from Chernobyl zone, I placed items one by one as I was looking through pages of disaster documentaries. Contains references to labs X16 and X18 and in-game items.

Steam (launch & exit the game at least once, check for version 1.0005 and install the mod, start a new game after)

It's recommened to temporary disable Microsoft Security Essentials, if you have it installed (this can be done under Settings inside the program), as it will try to unpack and scan the installer resulting in unresponsive system. The file is obviously clean.